The West Chicago Garden Club

Our first meeting of 2024 is coming up! We are looking forward to seeing everyone and getting started in planning and preparing for another year of gardening. Are you interested in growing a new variety of pepper or tomato that you saw in a seed catalog you got in the mail? Or maybe you just want to give your garden a head start for the growing season. Learn about the equipment and methods used for starting seeds indoors.

Our speaker is a University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener, Jan Gricus.

Meeting Location: St Andrew Lutheran Church (NE Corner of Prince Crossing & Geneva Road.)

Meeting Time:

• 6:45PM Arrive & Mingle
• 7:00PM Business Meeting
• 7:15PM Program

By Ruth Kyme

Our presenter, Ken Benson, is a landscape architect with degrees in horticulture from the University of Illinois. Ken will discuss the myth that gardening tools come from the store sharp. He will demonstrate how to use various sharpening stones to sharpen pruners, shovels, and all other gardening tools. You may bring a pair of hand pruners to be critiqued and if possible, sharpened with a hand file. Ken will try to sharpen as many pruners as possible, time permitting.

Benson is a landscape architect and was the host of cable TVs Landscaping with Ken Benson 1992-2000. He was a board member of the Chicago Flower and Garden Show 1998-2008 and a founding board member of MELA- Midwest Ecological Landscapers Association. Benson is also a past member of the Men’s Garden Club of Villa Park and has been giving programs since 1972 to garden clubs throughout the area.

REMINDER: If you still have pots that you would like to donate, our Plant Sale Chair people have organized to collect them at this month’s meeting. This is only for THIS month—we don’t have the space or time to handle this at other meetings. We are looking for 4” pots that we use for small plants and vegetables and for the standard gallon pots. Trays for both are also great. Ideally, we prefer pots that don’t have names/advertising printed on them, but we will take those. It would help, if you have the chance, to use a large sharpie to cross out whatever is printed on the pot and remove/cross out any labels on the pot.

Jerome Johnson is the creative director of the Garfield Farm Museum in Campton Hills. Garfield Farm Museum is a living history farm that preserves the original 1840s farmstead. Jerome’s presentation, “Heirloom Plants and Loss of Genetic Diversity in Domestic Cultivars,” will be an introduction to the loss of genetic diversity in the plants that we humans depend on. Learn about how planting heirloom plants can increase genetic diversity.

Meeting Location: St Andrew Lutheran Church NE Corner of Prince Crossing & Geneva Road.

Meeting Time: 6:45PM Refreshments – 7:00PM Business Meeting – 7:15PM Program